No, only publishing more content does not get you traffic. It’s consistency and quality that matters!

I mean think about this –

Why is it that you need to publish 11+ content pieces in a month? Are all these visitors really valuable to the company (or the set of companies surveyed)? Did all the 11 blog posts get as much traffic or was it one out of them that actually worked and the entire exercise was a hit and trial?

Think about following BuzzFeed’s approach on a healthcare site.

Now think about the healthcare site publishing more and more content to ‘drive traffic’. So they start off by publishing health related content. Then run out of steam and start publishing small listicles, and then just to keep up the high frequency, they publish quizzes like ‘which medicine are you?’

Tell me what you think about the approach.

You’re probably thinking – Why would I want to be a medicine?

Yes, that’s right.

You visited the site thinking you’re going to find some quality health-related information and you were bombarded with these quiz-like posts that had nothing to take away from.

This is the disaster that happens when you blindly follow someone else’s content publishing frequency!

So whenever you see a chart like the first one, I want you to think about the following questions:

• What type of sites were analysed while collecting the data?

• What’s the quality of the traffic those sites are getting?

• What’s the value that those sites have to offer?

Now if you’re wondering how on earth you should find the right frequency now that the 11+ content pieces a month don’t make sense, breathe.

Finding the right frequency for publishing content might take a while. But instead of shooting your shot in the dark, here’s how to begin:

1. Match your goals to your content schedule

If your goal is simply to build an email list or a following, you’re looking at giving something to your audience that they genuinely look forward to. Think about Moz’s Whiteboard Friday!

You leave everything aside and wait for this session because it has so much value packed into one. One content piece. Read that again. That one content piece makes you want to go back to Moz every Friday. That one content piece makes you want to engage with the brand.

But they set an expectation right from the start. They don’t over promise a high frequency of content under the brand. All they promised is a great session. Because that is their goal.

You might have different goals based on what you do, the industry you work in or the audience you’re catering to. So your frequency of publishing content will vary accordingly.

All I’m asking you to do is tie a goal to it. You should know what you’re trying to achieve by publishing even a single piece of content.

Trust me, I have been on both sides – the one writing the content and the one measuring the impact of it. It takes a lot of research and a lot of time to write quality content, and when it doesn’t perform, you start to have an existential crisis like the one after your favourite Netflix series gets over!

2. Focus on remaining consistent

Once you have your goal set, take a look at the resources available to you for accomplishing the content frequency you want to maintain. Is it something you can sustain week on week, month on month or year on year?

If you’re trying to build a consistent audience or a subscriber base, the focus should remain on publishing consistently.

Publishing one piece of content and then vanishing for weeks is counterproductive. You may have spent hours writing that quality piece of content, but you gave your readers no reason to come back again. So they’re all probably reading your competitor’s blog by now!

Multiple studies and marketing experts found that publishing content consistently was way more important than raw frequency.

Yes, you probably heard that on Moz.

3. Create content for your ideal customer, not bots!

Let’s go back to the example of that medicine quiz and think about how that company’s audience must have felt. Shocked? Disappointed? These words don’t even begin to explain how bad that ended up!

While creating content to maintain this new schedule of publishing, you really need to focus on crafting posts that ‘earn attention and amplification’. And of course, also help you reach your goal – be it getting the reader to subscribe to your blog, nudging them into a conversion funnel or simply earning a social media share out of it!

It’s way better to get 10 visitors who would actually engage with your brand or convert on the offer you’re making, than get 100 visitors who have absolutely no interest in what you have to say.

Think about ROI.

Do you really think that publishing 11+ content pieces that gets 2k+ visitors with none of them subscribing to your blog is worth the effort?

Nah.

Okay? Let’s go to the next.